NFL’s ‘Thursday Night Football’ up for grabs by YouTube, Verizon, Amazon and Twitter

Thursday Night Football streaming rights could stay with the top bidder for five years.

A multi-year deal for the streaming rights of Thursday Night Football by the NFL will soon be decided, and some huge tech corporations are in the running.

YouTube, Verizon, Amazon and Twitter are the final contenders. In the past, Twitter paid $10 million for the right to digitally stream the games in 2016, and Amazon paid $50 million in 2017.

The current deal is expected to be much higher, though, as the NFL is likely to attempt to make a deal for a five-year contract. They struck a similar deal recently with Fox Sports for five-years of television broadcasting. The longer contracts may be a move to battle against the NFL’s falling viewership.

While streaming Thursday Night Football remains enticing, the ratings have remained far lower than those on TV. For instance, while Amazon held the streaming rights last year, a Bears v. Packers game was able to draw in 373,000 viewers, while over 14 million watched on TV.

A change in the streaming platform could mean a big change for Thursday Night Football.

Let us know in the comments if you’re interested in streaming from a new site like YouTube, or if you’d prefer the rights stick with Amazon!